Tears......

"You can curse me all you want, Krelian, but you won't change the past by doing so." Miang shrugged elegantly, smiled that smile that was never quite devoid of her sharp cynicism. "I can only offer what favors are available to me at this time."

Krelian only just managed to hold back a snort of derision. "Yet you are very liberal with what favors you do offer, are you not?" He kept his back turned to her, hearing the mocking edge to his voice and not caring. "Hardly something to boost one's ego, when it is given so freely."

"Or are you just jealous of Ramsus?"

He snorted, not daring to respond.

"Fei?" Cold, stony silence was his response. Yet, as always, she stepped forward, crossed the line. And he could do...... nothing. "Yes, of course....... Why would you be in competition with your 'son', when it is the Contact that possesses what you desire?"

He nearly slapped her; no, throttled her would have been a closer estimation...... No one else would have survived such an insult. Then again, no one else knew quite as much as she knew. Not even his Sophia......

'His Sophia'. Krelian's lip curled in derision. She had never been 'his', not by any stretch of the word. Try as he might...... even he could not escape the fact that she had chosen that wretched painter over him; a man she hadn't seen since a distant childhood, instead of a man who had devoted his very life to her. Why? What did she see in him......?

Why Lacan, and not Krelian?

"Do you think I don't know the feeling?" Miang's presence appeared at his back, and he stiffened. "I once tried my hand in seperating them. Not out of love, as you so foolishly did, but that can be forgiven...... you were but a child, then." Her hand rested on his shoulder, fingers tapping lightly. The touch brought back a flood of memories -- not all pleasant.

Though, much to his own hidden resentment, not all bad either.

"I was only marginally successful. And he...... left me soon after. For her, of course. Needless to say, I was not particularly pleased......"

"You're rambling, Miang......" Krelian murmured, letting his mocking smirk fade.

He thought he felt her smile, sharp as it was. "Oh, I'm sure you don't care about my desires, or my attempts to achive this goal you've set for yourself." The hand became two hands, and then the warmth of cheek and breast and thigh. An insistent warmth, that struck him with a number of conflicting emotions. He tried to settle on annoyance; self-loathing broke through instead.

Self-loathing, because he knew what was next -- and he knew what he would do. If only nanomachines were protection enough......

But if his love for Sophia had not been enough...... what could mere machines do, however elegantly constructed?

Rain.

He could see it, from his vantage point on high, drifting down from the cottony clouds below his feet like a fine, silver mist of tears. Some might have thought it was god, weeping for the destruction reaped on Nisan...... on Ignas....... washing the blood away to renew the soil and heal the people.

But that was not what he saw.

No....... there was no god to weep for the innocents slaughtered. No divine entity to protect them, and heal them. Only the tears of the damned fell upon the surface of the earth...... weeping for their own misfortune.

All could be laid at the feet of one woman. How was it possible for one person to cause so much suffering to so many people? Proof, he thought, as if he needed proof, that god did not exist. What god would watch his beloved creations destroy themselves without intervening?

What god would take his beloved, precious angel from the earth and leave blood and fire in her wake?

And then there was the demon who had taken her place......

Or rather, the demon who was trying to take her place. She wasn't Sophia, and he didn't think she was deluding herself into thinking she amounted to the same, but nevertheless...... she made the effort. Was it some misguided attempt to ease his pain, or make him more pliable to her desires? Or was it just another instrument of torture, used for her own pleasure?

"Be at ease, Krelian." There was nothing gentle in Miang's voice. Nothing, in fact, came through at all. Just the coincidental, nightmarish similarity to the voice of his once-beloved. Or perhaps that had been meant-to-be, at the beginning of time. "Take your disappointments in stride......"

Slender arms encircled his chest, soft hands running across his uniform to clasp him in a trap-like embrace, leaving his skin tingling beneath the thin shield of cloth. Tight, almost too-warm embrace......

Krelian's eyes snapped shut tightly, as if the simple act could block out Miang's soft curves and the soothing, persuasive tones that were almost akin to his Sophia's...... but not quite close enough.

"Let yourself relax...... How do you expect to acheive your goal if you spend your remaining time here wound up so tightly?" A smooth hand reached up, brushed his hair back. His circlet -- the one remaining posession of his heritage -- lay on the table across the room. Strands of deep indigo fell across his eyes, mercifully hiding his expression from the one he could not seem to avoid.

He couldn't get away from her....... he just couldn't. He hated the part of him that made him stay, wrapped up in her manipulations, and those soft ivory arms.

He knew what her favors meant for him....... he knew what the draw of her promises would truly grant him. But he could not....... or would not...... bring himself to leave the enticing warmth of her pale, somehow familar skin......

Was she, truly, too much to resist? Or was he just a weakling, a slave to his unfulfilled desires?

"I'm not sure what it is she missed in you, Krelian......" Miang's smile was unreadable, devoid of sarcasm and kindness. Was she mocking him? The feathery touch of her lips at the nape of his neck silenced him before he could speak, sending a shiver down his spine.

He hated this, loathed her touch like nothing else in his realm of experience. Yet he could not draw away from her, when she chose to do this to him. The sensations, the taste of her, inspired an abhorance he couldn't ignore, yet...... yet, he longed for this too, in a strange, twisted fashion.

Despite his knowledge of her nature, despite his hate for the woman who had casued the death of his love, her nightbound embraces were all that had ever made him feel valued, or cared for. Irresistable.

After all, Miang grew bored with her conquests easily. Yet in his five hundred years in Solaris, never once had she left him for another man -- not even his 'son' kept her occupied for long.

Had she been capable of such a thing, he might have imagined she felt something for him, other than his importance to her plans. But this......

Krelian sighed, surrendering to her insistent warmth.

This was enough....... In truth....... it was all he deserved.


- Back